Fishermen's Supreme Court fight against government monitors could make big splash

CAPE MAY, N.J. — For nearly 50 years, America's herring fishermen have been required to take federal monitors on their boats when they set out into the North Atlantic.

Aboard cramped private trawlers, the monitors record the health of fish and of the sea.

But now there's a catch.

When regulators said the fishermen were on the hook to pay the monitors' salaries, many said the government had gone too far.

«We don't mind taking observers, you know, we have for decades now,» said Stefan Axelsson, a third-generation herring fisherman. «But to be told to pay for it just isn't right.»

«Me and everybody around me is concerned about that, highly concerned,» added Bill Bright, who has been in the herring business for four decades, «because the margins are so tight right now.»

Axelsson, Bright and half a dozen other fishermen — who say the added expense could drive some out of business — are taking their crusade against the policy to the U.S. Supreme Court. Arguments are expected to be heard on Wednesday, Jan. 17.

A ruling in their favor could have an impact far beyond the ocean, experts say.

«This case is going to completely change the way the federal government operates if the Supreme Court decides to change the status quo,» said Meredith Moore, director of the fish conservation program at Ocean Conservancy and member of the nation's Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee. She says this is a «Trojan horse» for the anti-regulation movement — a loophole that could affect oversight across the federal government.

At issue in the case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, is how much discretion federal agencies should have in doing their jobs — setting rules that govern everything from public health to environmental protection to tax collection